Russian physicist’s vision is re-creating Ice Age vista

Arthur Max THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published Sunday November 28, 2010 at 6:00 am

PHOTO/ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS

A tiny chapel is on the grounds of the Northeast Science Station in Siberia, where the Pleistocene Park is being watched by climate scientists, paleontologists and environmentalists interested in “re-wilding.”

Wild horses have returned to northern Siberia. So have musk oxen, hairy beasts that once shared this icy land with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Moose and reindeer are here, and one day may be joined by Canadian bison and deer.

Russian scientist Sergey Zimov is reintroducing these animals to the land where they once roamed in millions to demonstrate his theory that filling the vast emptiness of Siberia with grass-eating animals can slow global warming.

“Some people have a small garden. I have an Ice Age park. It’s my hobby,” says Zimov, smiling through his graying beard. His true profession is quantum physics.

Climate change is felt most sharply in the Arctic, where temperatures are warming faster than anywhere else on the planet. Most climate scientists say human activity, especially industrial pollution and the byproducts of everyday living such as heating homes and buildings and driving cars, is triggering an unnatural warming of the Earth. Negotiators representing 194 countries open a two-week conference Monday in Cancun, Mexico, on reducing greenhouse gases to slow the pace of climate change.

Zimov is trying to re-create an ecosystem that disappeared 10,000 years ago with the end of the Ice Age, which closed the 1.8 million-year Pleistocene era and ushered in the global climate roughly as we know it.

He believes herds of grazers will turn the tundra, which today supports spindly larch trees and shrubs, into luxurious grasslands. Tall grasses with complex root systems will stabilize the frozen soil, which is thawing at an ever-increasing rate, he says.

Herbivores keep wild grass short and healthy, sending up fresh shoots through the summer and autumn. Their manure gives crucial nourishment. In winter, the animals trample and flatten the snow that otherwise would insulate the ground from the cold air. That helps prevent the frozen ground, or permafrost, from thawing and releasing powerful greenhouse gases. Grass also reflects more sunlight than forests, a further damper to global warming.

It would take millions of animals to change the landscape of Siberia and effectively seal the permafrost. Left alone, Zimov argues, the likes of caribou, buffalo and musk oxen multiply quickly. Wherever they graze “new pastures will appear … beautiful grassland.”

The project is being watched not only by climate scientists, but by paleontologists and environmentalists who have an interest in “re-wilding.”

“This is a very interesting experiment,” Adrian Lister of the Natural History Museum in London told AP Television News. “I think it’s valid from an ecological point of view to put back animals that did formerly live there.” He disapproved of suggestions to re-wild nonnative species — for example, relocating elephants and rhinos to the American plains.

Zimov began the project in 1989, fencing off 40,000 acres of forest, meadows, shrub land and lakes. It is surrounded by another 150,000 acres of wilderness.

It is an offshoot of the Northeast Science Station, which he founded and where he has lived for 30 years. Already icebound by October, the park is 25 miles inland from the station, accessible only by boat in summer and by snow vehicles after the rivers freeze.

A 105-foot-tall tower inside the park gives constant readings of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor. The data feeds into a global monitoring system overseen by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Zimov’s research on permafrost, greenhouse gas emissions and mammoth archaeology has attracted world scientists to his laboratories, a small cluster of cabins and a tiny chapel on a rocky bluff above a channel of the Kolyma River. A 20-bed barge is used for field trips in summer, and a $100,000 hovercraft is on order. Zimov sometimes uses an old Russian tank to bring supplies from the Chinese border 1,200 miles away.

Part of the station’s attraction — and deterrence — is its remoteness. It is 4,000 miles and eight time zones east of Moscow. The nearby town of Chersky, with some 5,000 people, has few amenities, and the nearest city, Yakutsk, is a 4 1/2 -hour flight . Many researchers, particularly Americans, prefer to work in Alaska or northern Canada, which are more accessible.

“Most of the Arctic is in Russia, and yet most of the Arctic research isn’t,” said Max Holmes of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, director of the Polaris Project, which has sent undergraduates to the station for the last three summers.

The challenge is to find the right balance between grazers and predators, and how to help his animals get through their first winters.

Zimov’s workers still give occasional buckets of grain to the horses to supplement their diet with salt.Zimov also has had problems with the moose that he brought inside his enclosure. Moose still live in small numbers in surrounding forests, and the males jump back and forth over the 6-foot-high fence.

Today he has 70 animals in the park. He wants thousands to restock Siberia. To bring 1,000 bison from North America would cost $1 million, Zimov said, a small price to pay.

“If permafrost melts, 100 gigatons of carbon will be released this century,” he said. “What’s $1 million? One regular grant.”